Snippet #2380611

Room 1
1320

Tori paused, albeit briefly, to look at the ceiling when the PA crackled to life, but he didn’t comment on it at first. Instead, he turned his gaze back towards Xavier, who he studied quietly before nodding, having apparently come to some form of conclusion. What, exactly, he was thinking was unclear, and probing into his mindscape was likely an exercise for the unwise.

“ Oh, I’m pretty sure I’m real. Definitely real. That’s not one of my problems. Not at all. I’ve never been worried that I’m not real. Who I really am, though… well, that’s a bit of a difficult question, don’t you think? Can you ever know who anyone really is? Seems to me we’re all just guessing away, day in, day out, making all sorts of silly, dangerous assumptions that get us killed or worse.”

White teeth glittered as Tori stretched his thin lips into a smile. “Like Icarus.” He snorted. “Doctor Solaris. Whatever she wants to call herself. She is who she is, but to different people she’s different things. I suppose what she is to me is very different to what she is to you. Or poor little Sarah. Or Jack. But that doesn’t change what she is. She’s still real, even if everything you think about her is a lie.”

Tori carefully made his way back towards the door, leaning right out to look down the hallway. “Did you know that Sarah has just wandered off with her little friends? Not that Japanese girl, she’s not out there at the moment, but she’s not vanished like the others. Do you know how many people have gone already? Nobody else has noticed, but you’re clever, Xavier. I think you can figure it out if you pay attention.

“But that’s not important at the moment. They’re going on an expedition, Sarah and her little friend Matt with the hairy palms. Probably looking for Jack. They remember him, even when they forget Kieko. And Karissa. And Elise. Don’t you think that’s odd? I think that’s odd. They certainly remember your sister, though. She’s a difficult one to forget. Ever so exciting.”

Humming to himself, Tori took a firm hold of the doorframe and leaned even further out, before making a startled sound and throwing himself back into the room again. “Oooh, naughty. Naughty! Icarus has let her little pet out. Ooooh, this is going to be fun.”

Residential Hall
1317

It was fascinating, Keiko decided, how Icarus liked to change the rules on a whim, despite the game being long since set in stone. It would likely drive The Instigator mad(er, because even if Trephan couldn’t read his mind, the man clearly had a loose screw knocking about in there) that his plans had been disrupted, but it would doubtlessly be entertaining.

Arthur had not been planned. Nobody had been commissioned to capture him, The Instigator had made no plans for him, but as the Asylum was coming together the boy had been delivered along with the rest and assigned a room as if it were already pre-arranged. The Instigator had blown a fuse, in his own enigmatic way, but Trephan hadn’t been to blame and had been quite content to watch sparks fly.

It was obvious (at least to a mind reader) that Icarus was to blame; Trephan didn’t need to see into her head for that, nor had he ever felt the desire to peek. He was very old, and very skilled, but there were some hornet nests that were better left un-prodded.

Stealing the mind of a young girl and taking over her body, however, was little more than a half-drowned bee-hive without a queen, and Trephan had done it without remorse and with relative ease, becoming Keiko with a sense of expectant delight. It had been quite some time since he’d been a woman; women were fun.

With fun in mind, as well as mischief, Keiko crept out of her room and headed towards Nurse Base. Sarah (traitor) had already apparently gone off without her, more focused on Jack than anything else. That was an interesting development to say the least; nobody had factored romance into the games, but it would be fascinating if some were to happen spontaneously between inmates. The Instigator would likely want to study it, if he wasn’t too busy buzzing about getting everything else done. If there was one thing the man had, it was a highly skilled sense of organisation.

Walking up behind Arthur, Keiko quietly cleared her throat, keen to seem small, anxious, downtrodden; inside, she was nothing of the sort, but inside she wasn’t even the girl everybody else saw her as anymore. Trephan, in the depths of her mind, smiled, but Keiko’s face remained a mask of uncertain fear.

“Um… are you new?”

Infirmary
1320


Despite its function, and the assumption that there would at least be someone on duty at any given time, the infirmary was empty when Sarah and Matt came through the door. The whole area, as a matter of fact, had the air of sterile disuse about it, despite the battle that had raged there not all that long ago. The Asylum’s cleanup crew, ever diligent, had reversed all trace of what had happened previously.

A risky venture, but one played out by experts; Jack, who had been stored lightly sedated until such a time as the stage had been reset, had been laid out beside the body of Trephan, now deceased, and given drugs to induce consciousness at ten minutes to one. He had woken at one. By five past one, he had flown into a panic and secreted himself in a laundry cupboard that had been skilfully lighted to draw his wavering attention. By quarter past one, the team that had been hiding in Intensive treatment had wheeled out the twin metal tables and replaced them with a slept-in looking hospital bed, table and locker.

By the time Sarah and Matt arrived, the room appeared to be deserted, though recently vacated by a patient, and the closet in which Jack was hiding was silent save for his deliberately hushed breathing.